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But of course the NT word for Dragon isn't Dragon DomA Send a noteboard - 18/06/2010 05:45:34 PM
If we take "siswai'aman" as meaning "Spears of the Dragon", we have a conclusion that there is an Old Tongue word for "Dragon", which is peculiar because "Dragon" is a word without meaning for Third Age people, aside from the title of Lews Therin Telamon, who would have obviously borne that title in the Old Tongue. So really, shouldn't "Dragon" already be the Old Tongue word for Dragon? Whence comes this 'aman' then?

Funny too, because I seem to remember that in order to dodge the use of the word "Dragon", dragonflies are called lacewings in The Wheel of Time.


We might have a clue about this from a Fourth Age cycle of stories (that - so I presume, is one of our sole examples of the "new tongue" in the text rather than transliterated as English. There's little reason to believe a fourth Age text has an Old Tongue title, anyway...) It looks and sounds, of course, very much like the simplified version of the OT the new tongue is supposed to be:

The "Cycle of the Dragon" reads Charal Drianaan te Calamon.

It appears that over the course of millenia, the title of Dragon has evolved from the OT compound Calaman, that is: "red dragon". It's either that, or perhaps more likely, the OT name for Dragon was Calaman, and it's abbreviated into 'aman in a compounded expression like siswai'aman (languages using compounds almost always shorten the root words, otherwise you end up with impossibly long words...).

So, the OT title of LTT was "Aman" or "Calaman", and in the NT the word is "Calamon". The word "te" in the NT has seemingly replaced "an". Either way, Dragon in the NT is still very close to Dragon in the OT. The similarity between aman and calaman and Telamon makes me wonder if the origin of why he got called Dragon isn't in a pun between his honorific and the name of the (no doubt fictional/mythological, and seemingly related to the great serpent) creature dragon.

It becomes more obvious why the Forsaken aren't too mixed up and why the characters can't understand the OT at the same time. The OT used compound words with complex rules of word and sentence formation. The NT has set in stone the old compounds to form a fixed vocabulary, simplified the grammar a lot, and those new words have evolved over time so that many don't follow the compound rules anymore. The Forsaken know the rules of compounding, so it's much easier for them to puzzle out the meaning of the "bastard" words in the NT than for NT speakers to puzzle out how the OT compounds relate to their own vocabulary, especially that they have lost knowledge of many of the "root words", which forcibly (as in all compounded languages) often have a large palette of purely context-based meanings (an example of this is how the root word for "left" and "west" is the same one).

This message last edited by DomA on 18/06/2010 at 06:06:26 PM
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Forsaken translations - 17/06/2010 09:16:36 AM 2756 Views
Yeah... - 17/06/2010 09:31:15 AM 1984 Views
Semirhage is named as "The Lady of Pain" in KoD, by Rand... - 17/06/2010 11:14:56 AM 2350 Views
You are right... - 17/06/2010 11:31:05 AM 1885 Views
Do Semirhage & Bel'al actually mean those things or are they other nicknames? - 17/06/2010 11:38:18 AM 1828 Views
On Be'lal - 17/06/2010 11:42:31 AM 1672 Views
Nice ideas! - 17/06/2010 02:10:43 PM 1786 Views
Gai'shain = those sworn to peace in battle - 17/06/2010 09:22:02 PM 1687 Views
Gaidin = Brother to Battle ... which is what I think the OP meant to use - 17/06/2010 09:32:20 PM 1575 Views
Presumably he meant "Dai Shan", or "Battle Lord", as he said. - 17/06/2010 10:37:07 PM 1636 Views
or that *NM* - 17/06/2010 10:45:49 PM 937 Views
About Aginor - 17/06/2010 12:50:04 PM 2101 Views
Great! - 17/06/2010 02:11:47 PM 1780 Views
Some Old Tongue translations - 17/06/2010 01:34:18 PM 1680 Views
ah Thanks! *NM* - 17/06/2010 02:12:00 PM 928 Views
Good luck with that - 17/06/2010 02:36:36 PM 1758 Views
Re: Good luck with that - 17/06/2010 03:24:52 PM 1576 Views
Very interesting! - 17/06/2010 08:34:36 PM 1754 Views
As always, - 20/06/2010 02:25:07 PM 1558 Views
I always thought Lanfear probably translated to something closer to a Moon translation - 17/06/2010 02:43:04 PM 1900 Views
it's the other way around... - 17/06/2010 02:58:33 PM 1624 Views
good point - 17/06/2010 03:13:17 PM 1631 Views
Re: good point - 17/06/2010 04:05:50 PM 1690 Views
Not to mention she STILL hasn't earned a 3rd (or in 4th) name - 17/06/2010 04:16:57 PM 1659 Views
What about Cyndane - 17/06/2010 04:48:03 PM 1567 Views
It must be her favorite one, since it's the only one she actually earned *NM* - 17/06/2010 05:43:41 PM 852 Views
Well she earned Mierin *NM* - 17/06/2010 08:27:05 PM 974 Views
how so? I figured mom and dad gave that one too her *NM* - 17/06/2010 08:36:24 PM 882 Views
she earned it by being born... ha! gotcha *NM* - 17/06/2010 08:39:10 PM 842 Views
HA! But technically I think her mother earned that *NM* - 17/06/2010 08:58:30 PM 773 Views
well she earned Eronaile by virtue of her genetics *NM* - 17/06/2010 09:04:36 PM 857 Views
Tee hee ... I'd credit her father on that one *NM* - 17/06/2010 09:31:19 PM 891 Views
Re: good point - 17/06/2010 04:47:01 PM 1728 Views
Again, a self-proclaimed ownership aimed at making her seem more impressive - 17/06/2010 05:55:12 PM 1671 Views
I disagree - 17/06/2010 06:20:08 PM 1687 Views
Personally I think that order was off the cuff - 17/06/2010 08:55:28 PM 1804 Views
Re: Personally I think that order was off the cuff - 17/06/2010 09:02:06 PM 1752 Views
Disagree - 17/06/2010 09:28:51 PM 1672 Views
Re: Disagree - 17/06/2010 09:41:23 PM 1653 Views
I'm not being very clear - 17/06/2010 10:14:10 PM 1627 Views
Re: I'm not being very clear - 18/06/2010 08:06:56 AM 4118 Views
Re: I'm not being very clear - 18/06/2010 03:33:12 PM 1634 Views
Re: I'm not being very clear - 18/06/2010 04:35:12 PM 1514 Views
The point isn't if Lanfear has the skill, it's that it was poorly shown. - 18/06/2010 05:31:11 PM 1669 Views
I think it's shown well - 18/06/2010 06:10:55 PM 1810 Views
your own examples show only OP prowess though! - 18/06/2010 06:54:38 PM 1748 Views
How can you say Semirhage didn't achieve anything? - 18/06/2010 01:59:44 AM 1698 Views
I'm partial to Sammael myself. - 18/06/2010 02:24:49 AM 1507 Views
The statement makes clear that those 6 were all quite impressive - 17/06/2010 10:51:49 PM 1458 Views
I don't see that bearing out in the text at all - 17/06/2010 10:57:36 PM 1652 Views
Well, with this point I don't disagree.. *NM* - 17/06/2010 11:10:34 PM 1578 Views
- 17/06/2010 11:12:58 PM 1674 Views
Lanfear's motives were never Shadow-driven - 20/06/2010 06:47:22 PM 1715 Views
not ballsy, just psycho - 20/06/2010 07:25:46 PM 1680 Views
Like Etzel I don't agree - 17/06/2010 08:30:37 PM 1565 Views
I think she's a weak villain - 17/06/2010 08:58:01 PM 1564 Views
Re: I think she's a weak villain - 17/06/2010 09:03:47 PM 1624 Views
Semirhage has done more than anyone since Ishy destroyed the Ten Nations - 18/06/2010 02:06:30 AM 1630 Views
Regarding "Demandred" ... - 17/06/2010 04:51:43 PM 1640 Views
I always thought it was a coincidence - 17/06/2010 08:32:39 PM 1933 Views
Lan/Lanfear isn't a coincidence... - 18/06/2010 12:19:58 AM 1605 Views
Wow. I'm not quite sure where this came from... *NM* - 18/06/2010 05:24:25 PM 820 Views
Re: Lan/Lanfear isn't a coincidence... - 20/06/2010 07:01:55 PM 1701 Views
No, it was supposed to be a joke. - 20/06/2010 07:23:19 PM 1657 Views
Re: No, it was supposed to be a joke. - 21/06/2010 06:36:44 AM 1657 Views
Re: I always thought it was a coincidence - 18/06/2010 05:20:11 PM 1669 Views
Perhaps Lan-fear meaning Night-Daughter would make more sense - 17/06/2010 06:00:35 PM 1670 Views
Interesting *NM* - 17/06/2010 08:33:03 PM 926 Views
Re: Perhaps Lan-fear meaning Night-Daughter would make more sense - 18/06/2010 04:23:38 PM 1888 Views
Regarding "Far Dareis Mai" ... - 18/06/2010 05:28:41 PM 1557 Views
We also have din in Mera'din/Brotherless and far in Far Madding - 18/06/2010 08:16:14 PM 1652 Views
Re: Regarding "Far Dareis Mai" ... - 20/06/2010 03:56:38 AM 1875 Views
And Dragon translations... - 17/06/2010 10:53:02 PM 1772 Views
Re: And Dragon translations... - 17/06/2010 11:01:25 PM 1588 Views
But of course the NT word for Dragon isn't Dragon - 18/06/2010 05:45:34 PM 1837 Views
Ah yes, that sounds reasonable. *NM* - 18/06/2010 08:28:54 PM 887 Views
If "aman" is the Old Tongue name for Dragon, maybe "DEMANdred" contains a reference to Dragon too... - 20/06/2010 08:13:35 PM 1851 Views
"Dragon Wannabe" *NM* - 20/06/2010 09:23:09 PM 728 Views
Lizard? *NM* - 20/06/2010 10:04:21 PM 914 Views
"Scaled Worm"... though I doubt he'd take that name up in pride . *NM* - 22/06/2010 01:23:03 AM 807 Views
It's probably too much to attempt to guess at the meanings of words... - 17/06/2010 10:58:06 PM 1378 Views
A nice article about the Old Tongue and my ramblings - 18/06/2010 11:14:24 AM 7872 Views

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